There isn't much to say about why I made the switch to Medium, except perhaps that there's a lot more customization capability with none of the maintenance responsibility that comes with maintaining your own website. For the foreseeable future, this blog will live on but all posts will be made on Medium - medium.com/the-true-perspective.

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Saturday, December 27, 2014

The top trend in Pakistan on Twitter today was #WeHateLiberalFascists, started by a charming young man called Farhan Khan Virk who according to his Twitter bio is a "Global Youth Ambassador for the UN" - (since I wrote the post, he has changed his Twitter bio), as well as a medical student, blogger, social media activist, and by the look of his tweets, a PTI fanatic and yadda yadda yadda. So I went to his blog to check out what kind of views this man espouses, when I discovered that he's "neither a liberal fascist, nor a religious fanatic". Well good for him.

The reason Mr Virk started the #WeHateLiberalFascists hashtag was because according to him "TTP and Liberal Fascists are same! One group kills us and the other group protects those killers from hangings!" [link].

Now before I delve deeper into the narrative espoused my Mr Virk, let me just clarify who a fascist actually is. A fascist is someone who believes in radical authoritarian nationalism. The same kind being displayed by Mr Virk and his ilk. So by any stretch of the imagination, it is Mr Virk who is technically a liberal fascist, and not those who disagree with him.

I don't know under what rock Mr Virk lies but the truth of the matter is that the so called "liberal fascists" he wants to hang (along with the Taliban) are the same people who have been voicing their anti Taliban opinions since this whole mess started in Pakistan. The same people who said do not make a distinction between the good and bad Taliban; the same people who warned talking to these terrorists will come to bite you in the ass; the same people who stand outside Lal Masjid and demand that those terrorist apologists who spew hate from the pulpits of mosques are held accountable. But as Mr Virk is a PTI supporter (member?) logic, common sense and decency do not seem to be his forte.

Hypocrisy seems to be woven into the fabric of the PTI so let me refresh everyone's memory a little bit. Imran Khan has been shouting himself hoarse by saying repeatedly that these terrorists who kill and maim Pakistanis are "our people" who have been wronged, and who have lost loved ones in drone attacks. That these terrorists responsible for the deaths of 60,000 Pakistanis are angry because American drones kill terrorists inside Pakistan. Imran Khan also famously said that the "Taliban do not want to impose Sharia in Pakistan by using force". Imran Khan, by the looks of it, seems to have a great in with the Taliban. The problem however is, that every time Khan opens his mouth to drop his pearls of wisdom, he's proven wrong; but that's a discussion for another time. What's important to note here is that just like Imran Khan, his supporters have cried themselves hoarse in defending the Taliban, and flayed the government when it decided to launch an operation against these terrorists. So it astonishes me that Mr Virk has the audacity to say the so called liberal fascists and the Taliban are the same when these liberal fascists were the one constantly opposing the Taliban, while Mr Virk and his ilk were defending the soul less monsters roaming in Pakistan's tribal belt.

Hijacking a narrative and obfuscating the truth has become the norm in Pakistan. That's what Mr Virk and his fellow PTI supporters have done in this instance. Let me just briefly mention the backstory of why liberal fascists offend Mr Virk so much. After the government lifted the moratorium on the death penalty in Pakistan, a lot of clear headed Pakistanis implored the government to rethink the decision. The reason was that 86% of the death row inmates were tried by anti terrorism courts, when they had in fact nothing to do with terrorism. Shafqat Hussain's case is a glaring example of this injustice. When people raised their voice on this issue, in swooped Mr Virk and his ilk to hijack the issue and say liberal fascists are defenders of terrorists because they don't want them to be hanged. But that's not really the truth now, is it?

Now Farhan Khan Virk is a man who likes to stir the pot every now and then against all those people the PTI loves to hate. But I don't see him starting a Twitter trend to ask the government about the unfortunate release of Malik Ishaq, the leader of the terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, or the release of Zaki ur Rehman Lakhvi, the main accused in the Mumbai attacks. This is what ticks people off. The hypocrisy of these so called defenders of Pakistan. Maybe next time Mr Virk would be well advised to go after people who have actually harmed Pakistan and harbor the intent to do it again, instead of those who simply do not fit in the myopic bracket of Mr Virk's acceptable opinions list.

Friday, August 22, 2014

I do not believe Imran Khan has the skills, or the fortitude to lead this country. The only thing people keep saying in his defense is that we've tried the rest, now we should give him a chance. But he had a chance. That chance is called KPK. He failed miserably. His foreign policy has no sense or direction, his interior policy is extremely dangerous for the country and his emotional tantrums make him unfit to be an administrator. And because he's made the same tall claims that the rest of our political gentry has made, you can be rest assured he'll fall even more spectacularly than the Sharifs (if they fall of course). By comparison the Sharifs policy of non confrontational politics and reconciliation is a refreshing and welcome change. Imran Khan's only calling for the resignation of Sharifs because he wants to be the next prime minister. That is it. I would've agreed with him, heck even supported him if his so called freedom march was for accountability of the Lahore genocide; was for electoral reforms; was for drafting new local body rules and elections; was for re-elections in the districts that were found to be rigged (so far all of PTI's petitions have been rejected because they couldn't prove their allegations). But I am not going to support a pied piper who's deluded himself into believing he is the rightful heir to a throne in Islamabad, and who will kill the system just so he can have his way.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

So I did a social experiment last night. After talking to a friend of mine, I shared his post about the horrendous Ahmedi murders on my Facebook page, as well as The True Perspective's page. Guess what? Zero likes. Zero. Not a single comment agreeing with the sentiment; not a single comment saying anything about the affair at all. Apparently as a collective group, we don't really care if innocent pregnant women are burned. We don't care if a 7 year old dies because she was set on fire; or that a 16 month old baby, who still had to decide whether she wanted to grow up to be an apostate by the way, died because her skin melted off and her body fried in the sizzling fire. Meanwhile outside the burning houses people jumped up and down and danced around because Islam had been saved.

As I told my friend last night, and as I've been saying on Twitter for a little while now, the only difference between Pakistan and Israel -- the country Pakistanis love to hate -- is that Israel is populated with Jews, while Pakistan is populated with Muslims. Both foolish, both lost in the purpose of a cause that is as far removed from common sense as Pluto is from the sun.

Pakistanis love to condemn Israelis; they make YouTube videos and posters and start hashtag campaigns on Twitter and pretend they're the champions of Gazans; that if somehow they got their way, they would wipe Israel of the map. But now let's draw a comparison that's closer to home shall we? The Israelis condemn the Gazans and call them all terrorists; the Israelis say all Gazans must die, children, women, men what have you. The Israelis say Gazans are all terrorists and apostates bent on destroying Judaism. The Israelis sit on hillsides with popcorn and cheer when Israelis rockets kill 1300 Gazans. What about Pakistanis? They say Ahmedis, Shias, Sunnis, Barelvis -- basically anyone who disagrees with their narrow, xenophobic, myopic worldview through the prism of religion -- are all apostates. That they must pay the price for their apostasy. That we must kill these scoundrels to save Islam. And boy, do they save Islam everyday! The Israelis eat popcorn, the Pakistanis set houses on fire and dance around playing ring a ring of roses.

The sheer hypocrisy of this country's educated elite astonishes me. Not too long ago I got into an argument with a person about Malala Yousafzai. The gentleman sitting behind his computer launched a tirade against Malala for not condemning Israel. When I countered by saying it's not her bloody job to condemn anything -- she's a 17 year old girl who's an education activist -- he turned on me. This person who was so angry and riled because Israel was killing innocent Gazans that he stooped down to the level of defiling the morality a 17 year old girl, did not have the fucking guts to speak out against the Ahmedi butchering that took place not 2 hours from where he lives. And it's not just him. It's every single fucking Pakistani like him who think the only problems we have in Pakistan are all in Gaza actually, because Israel's committing a genocide.

There are only around 150,000 Ahmedis left in Pakistan. I urge them all to leave. This is not their country. They have no right to live here, to exist, or even to breathe the same air as the pious Musalmans of Pakistan. They are a sport to be hunted and brutalized as and when the pious Musalmans of Pakistan feel their religion slipping away. As my friend wrote on Facebook, miscreants or terrorists did not kill those innocent persons -- the ordinary people of Pakistan did. That's all you need to know about Pakistan anymore.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

I have avoided writing about this topic for as long as possible. After all, as a Pakistani my first duty is to talk about Pakistan and all the atrocious nonsense taking place in my homeland. But there comes a breaking point, where no matter who you are or what you believe in, you have to speak up against the injustice. My breaking point came after seeing pictures of dead children lying on the streets of Gaza, and people like Nick Kristof (who generally I have much respect for), blatantly trying to justify Israel’s genocide of Gazans.

As of this moment, 400 Palestinians have died in Israeli aerial and land bombardment. The UN says 80% of all those killed in this genocide are civilians. But of course that matters none to President Barack Hussain Obama, who at the White House Iftar Dinner stated “Israel has every right to defend itself”. Might one ask Mr President, what about the Gazans? Do they also have a right to defend themselves? Yes? No?

There are people, and learned people at that, who claim that if Hamas stops firing homemade rockets into Israel, Israel will become a good boy and go play in its own backyard. But these learned men and women are simplifying the last 70 years of Israel’s existence. Why pray, did Hamas come into existence in the first place? Well it came into existence because Israel is an occupier of the Palestinian territories and the Palestinians want them to get the fuck out of Palestinian lands. Hamas was founded in 1987 at the end of the First Intifada, which incidentally was a Palestinian non-violent movement to get Israel off of Palestinian properties. So Mr Kristof, your suggestion that Palestinians indulge in non-violent resistance movements [sic] has been tried before by the Palestinians. Didn’t really work out in their favor, buddy.

I have no sympathy for Hamas. Their blatant disregard for Palestinian life is self evident. However to call the Israeli Palestinian conflict a fair fight is bordering on the insane. You see every single logic you can concoct to justify Israel’s genocide of Palestinians (Hamas throws rockets at Israel; Hamas has built tunnels in Gaza; Hamas is a terrorist organization and must be eliminated) falls flat in the face of hundreds of women and children that have been killed by Israel’s bombs. So instead of asking Hamas to show restraint, why don’t you ask Israel to grow the fuck up, and act like a responsible fucking state by stopping the Palestinian genocide? And then you can feel free to cuss at Hamas all you want.

Many hundreds more will die. Many of them innocent people, who were trying to escape the Israeli genocide. Once a truce is announced, we’ll forget all about it, until it starts again and then the same bullshit arguments, and the same bullshit justifications will be used when Palestinian deaths are announced.